Akatsuki Dreams
by Kantayra
Summary: In their final moments before death, the members of Akatsuki experience one last vision of their past, their present, and what could be. This chapter: Pain.
1. Sasori Dreams

Disclaimer: Everything Naruto belongs to Kishimoto. I just sneak into his playground every so often.

Summary: In their final moments before death, the members of Akatsuki experience one last vision of their past, their present, and what could be.

Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for the manga up until this point. Later chapters should spoil into the future until all the Akatsuki members die. Warning for character death, naturally, and maybe some implied yaoi if you're really looking for it.

Author's Note: I just couldn't let Akatsuki go without one last goodbye. This part is Sasori. I'll post the others as I think of ideas.

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Akatsuki Dreams  
by Kantayra

Chapter One – Sasori Dreams

Sasori stood on a sandy plain and felt the wind blow through his hair. The desert stretched out for endless miles all around him. It had been an age since he'd stood in his true form in the open like this, and even longer since he'd felt any such sensation. His hair had been fiber carefully rooted into wood for years, artificial and lifeless and devoid of _touch_. He had been free of the ability to feel the evening air on his cheek for what felt like a lifetime; free of the chill and bite the wind brought with it, as well. No pain and no pleasure, or at least very close to it. It had been his perfect world for almost as long as he could remember.

Somehow, though, this newfound ability to feel didn't disturb him, and he didn't wonder how it was possible. In this moment, as he watched the sun set over the desert, he was perfectly at peace with this memory of a human existence almost forgotten.

"Not so eternal, yeah?" came a low voice from beside him.

Sasori didn't have to look to identify the speaker. Years spent working closely with any one person naturally put them into perfect harmony with each other, no matter what the differences between them were. He and Deidara were partners, and so they worked as one, even when their personalities pulled them in opposite directions. It didn't trouble Sasori now like it had when they were first partnered.

"The sunset?" Sasori asked. His eyes flitted to one side to see Deidara shrug beside him.

"Everything."

The golds in the sky transformed into reds and purples, and Sasori looked away rather than acknowledge the change. His gaze focused on his own hands instead, slowly taking in livid flesh on what should have been lineless, perfect puppet limbs. There were creases in these hands, lines of wear and age.

Sasori studied them, suddenly fascinated by their infinite complexity, beyond anything that even a master artist like himself could create. He had never known hands like this. His own had been traded in for artificial and antiseptic limbs long before he'd reached an age when any imperfections would show.

"Mirror?" Sasori asked, absorbed by curiosity for this new form. Dimly in the back of his mind, it seemed strange to him that flesh should intrigue him now, after all these years. He hadn't thought about what it had been like for over a decade now, and he'd almost forgotten his old concerns that his still-beating heart left him far too human and vulnerable.

"Here." Deidara held out one hand before him, and instead of the explosive clay that usually emerged from the mouth there, a silvery reflective substance pooled in Deidara's palm instead, thick like quicksilver but as clear and pure as any mountain lake.

Sasori gazed at his reflection in Deidara's palm as the sunlight faded all around them. He knew the face there, yet he didn't. "I'm a man," he whispered almost reverently. His imperfect hand came up to explore features that had grown up in a way that Sasori never had. "I'm my own age."

"It happens to everybody sooner or later," Deidara agreed.

Sasori's fingers encircled Deidara's wrist and brought the mirror in his palm closer to his face so that he could see himself better. His skin almost burned with the heat of Deidara's flesh, too long unfamiliar with human contact. He froze for a moment, waiting for the inevitable heartbreak he'd come to associate with human contact from his childhood.

Instead, there was nothing, just the wind, the steady warmth of Deidara's skin, and familiar grey eyes that blinked up at him from the mirror. He'd _known_ those eyes once, so long ago.

Fingers trembling slightly on Deidara's wrist, he really _looked_ at himself for the first time.

"Father…" he breathed in disbelief.

And it was his father he saw, not the puppet he'd created so long ago in his father's image, but his actual father. With a sudden stirring of _something_ deep inside, he realized that his father had never left him, because he was here, right now, in Sasori's reflection. How could he ever have been alone when his father had been hidden inside him all this time, just waiting to reveal himself?

It was a trick a master puppeteer should never have missed: one being concealed within another.

"That's what human frailty is, I suppose," Deidara commented philosophically, reading Sasori's expressions perfectly in that uncanny way he sometimes could. "The pain blots out all reality."

Sasori smiled slightly to himself at the thought. "This is why you find art in impermanence," he finally understood. There was a sort of ethereal beauty to it all.

"Well, that and it's fun to blow things up, yeah?"

Sasori's smile widened. He looked up from the mirror to his partner of many years. It suddenly occurred to him that he'd been alone for such a long time that he hadn't even noticed when the loneliness had ended. Deidara was many things, but he'd never left Sasori alone; that was certain.

"You know, brat," Sasori said slyly, "I may actually miss you."

Deidara smirked. "Don't get all weepy on me now, Master."

Sasori looked at his hands once more. They were dimmer now, the edges becoming softer as the light was fading. "It seems I won't last, after all. Does that mean I was never an artist?"

"Hmm," Deidara said thoughtfully. "I'd say you're even more beautiful for having finally faded away."

"I think I understand," Sasori agreed as the darkness encroached around him.

"And you _did_ go out with quite a bang."

"I did, didn't I?" Sasori smiled to himself as the world went black. "Thank you."

"My pleasure, Master Sasori." Deidara's voice was fading now, as if he were moving away impossibly fast.

"But don't forget," were Sasori's parting words, "I still hate waiting."

The distant rumbling of Deidara's full laugh accompanied him into oblivion.

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Thanks for reading, and comments are always appreciated.


	2. Hidan Dreams

Disclaimer & all that jazz: See Chapter One.

Author's Note: This one was tricky for me since we didn't get much of anything on Hidan's backstory, plus he can't actually die. I'd like to thank kally77 who read all my drafts and pointed me in the right direction whenever I was flailing in the darkness.

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Akatsuki Dreams  
by Kantayra

Chapter Two – Hidan Dreams

Hundreds of years passed, thousands, maybe even millions; Hidan spun slowly, endlessly into the abyss. He could feel time wrap around him, his greatest ally and worst enemy all in one. Everything was dark, silent, and unchanging.

Hidan screamed at first. His rage echoed back at him a thousandfold, as if reflecting off of countless surfaces. He couldn't see a thing through the blackness.

At some point, Hidan realized that his ears were the only ones suffering his screams, and he turned to raving instead. "You son-of-a-bitch," he ranted at the kid who had put him here, "I'm going to make you pay. I'll drain every drop of blood from your body and _bathe_ in it!"

The words "son" and "bitch" came back at him in a deafening cacophony. It seemed he couldn't even vent here without it being thrown back at him.

"Well, that was a great plan," said a snide but inexplicably crisp voice.

Hidan tried to turn to look, but he couldn't move or see. "Where they fuck have _you_ been all this time, asshole? Get me out of here, so I can rip every last one of the still-beating hearts from your body."

"With motivation like that, how can I refuse?" came Kakuzu's crisp reply.

Hidan could hear that Kakuzu was in another place, because Kakuzu's words didn't echo. He couldn't figure out _where_ his partner was, though, so he shut his mouth and listened, just for a few minutes.

There was only silence, darkness, and that slow, spinning sensation. It was deathly dull and, gradually, Hidan could feel his mind start to wander in the emptiness, like sleep but different, too.

He didn't know how long he drifted in silence, straining for the sound of Kakuzu's voice. He would wake, rant some to get a calm reply, and then _listen_ to the silence that followed. For an immortal, sometimes change was so subtle that it was completely unnoticeable until that change was so profound it was almost impossible to remember the way things once were.

For Hidan, the change came full-circle when he realized the silence was beautiful.

One day, he woke up and didn't speak, to Kakuzu or anyone else. There was no sound, and he didn't know if it was because his heart and lungs were gone or something else. He couldn't tell if he had his body or not in this dream. It was just…peace.

Hidan had never experienced the quiet before, and he'd never been faced with the situation where he had nothing to do but think. In truth, he'd never been much of a thinker, and he didn't have much to think about now. Even revenge got tiresome after a thousand years.

This place didn't feel solid to him, so it was hard to think about earthly concerns. He supposed that he should think about how to escape his eternal prison. He had forever. Moving inch-by-inch, just using his mouth, he could slowly piece himself back together. Eventually, he could be whole again. He could walk the earth, shed blood, and never die.

More than anything in the world, Hidan wanted to die.

Instead, he let infinity spin around him, pulling him deeper inside.

The silence, Hidan eventually discovered, wasn't really silence. He was on the earth, or in the earth; he still couldn't tell if this was real or a dream. The earth shifted and moved, so subtly that no one but a man with far too much time on his hands could feel that it was actually _alive_. Deep below, rocks stirred, earth shifted, and soil decomposed. The spinning he felt was the slow rotation of the planet's axis as day passed on to night. The earth was like Hidan in many ways, impotent but still alive.

Over time, he came to think of the shifting of the soil as the new beat of his heart, roots growing as his breath, darkness as his mind.

Despite his devoutness, Hidan didn't reflect much on Jashin for quite some time. He vaguely remembered cursing his enemies in Jashin's name, so long ago now that the rage was almost completely forgotten. Rage had been important to him once. He seemed to remember that it was very loud, not like the world he lived in now at all.

When he finally did turn to Jashin, he remembered the blood most of all – the sacrifice of tiny red drops that fell to the earth, still warm and pulsing with life. He realized the rips in his body must have been bleeding constantly, but the pain was behind him now. Every day, new droplets formed to replace old ones that had fallen the previous day. He could hear that dripping, and it was like the earth's blood. He was just another part of an endlessly shifting system.

"This is Jashin's way," he finally understood.

Kakuzu's snort of annoyance was the only response to his insight.

Every day, he shed his life, and in return more blood was granted to him. He'd thought it was a curse, but now it felt right. He was complete, part of an infinite cycle.

The times when he drifted off grew longer and deeper after that, like he was going somewhere very far from consciousness and some day he might not come back. It was different from the darkness around him; that darkness he could _see_ and was aware of. This place he was drifting into…

He thought maybe it was death.

Eternity spiraled before him, and Hidan's body was a constant sacrifice to the earth, offering up his life's blood without thought or question. Finally, he spoke:

"I think this is the end."

"I'm glad," Kakuzu said, his inexplicable presence only half-remembered.

"Me, too."

Hidan's mind drifted further into oblivion until one day, it forgot what it was to live. It forgot what it was to come back. It forgot what it was to be Hidan.

Hidan didn't live, and he didn't dream.

In the void was bliss.

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Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who left me such wonderful comments! Next chapter will be Kakuzu, and it should be out soon.


	3. Kakuzu Dreams

Disclaimer, et al.: See Chapter One.

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Akatsuki Dreams  
by Kantayra

Chapter Three – Kakuzu Dreams

All around, the walls were solid gold.

Kakuzu turned in a circle, looking upward. High above, he could see where the walls ended and the sunlight streamed in. The light radiated down through the hole in the ceiling, gleaming off of gold until it illuminated the place where Kakuzu stood. It was a monumental and breathtaking sight.

Kakuzu held up his hands to watch the light reflect off of them; it looked like his skin itself had turned gold.

That was when he noticed that the sunlight was having an interesting effect on his body. As he watched, the stitches in his wrists wriggled under the sunlight. He frowned, confused, as one-by-one the stitches popped free and slithered up his wrist, down his body, and to the ground.

He was surrounded, in fact, by thousands of tiny stitches, crawling across the ground like snakes, fanning out from his body and to the door on the far wall.

"Better watch it, or you'll fall to pieces." Hidan chuckled to himself at his own joke.

Kakuzu glared at where his partner had suddenly appeared, looking bored and insouciant as always, against one of the far walls. The gold was in shadow there, so Kakuzu hadn't seen him at first amidst the brilliance of the rest of this place.

"Shut up, unless you know what you're talking about," he shot back.

Indeed, as he looked down at his hands, the place where the stitches had been wasn't even scarred, as if his flesh had always been perfect.

"Where the hell are they going, anyway?"

Kakuzu was surprised that Hidan was right; they did seem to have a destination. Kakuzu wasn't sure where else they'd want to go, though. This was the most wonderful place he'd ever been. Why would anyone leave?

"Come on," Hidan complained. "There's nothing here. Let's go see."

Kakuzu frowned. As usual, Hidan didn't understand. He still followed Hidan, though, even though he was loath to leave this sanctuary.

The distance between the center of the room and the walls was further than he would have guessed. With only gold around him, he had no frame of reference. The walk felt endless, but finally he could hear a roaring. He could see now that the door was beneath a waterfall.

The droplets had already soaked the ankles of Hidan's pants through by the time Kakuzu reached him. "Took you long enough," Hidan grinned.

Kakuzu watched the water plummet outside the door. "You first."

Hidan shrugged and plunged through. After a moment, Kakuzu couldn't see him any more. He waited impatiently for a few minutes before finally concluding that Hidan wasn't coming back.

It left Kakuzu at a crossroads. He didn't want to leave his golden sanctuary, but at the same time he couldn't abandon Hidan to face whatever was out there alone. He hesitated for a moment and then, with a reluctant sigh, stepped into the water. He could always come back later after he'd thoroughly thrashed Hidan for making him get wet like this.

The water parted for him, shockingly cold, and he sputtered and forced his way through it. By the time he emerged from the falls, he was gasping for breath.

"Just like home, huh?"

Kakuzu didn't say anything. He hadn't been 'home' in so long that the word had lost all meaning for him. Instead, he gazed out at the world outside the golden shrine.

It was a barren wasteland. The ground was pitch-black. At first Kakuzu thought it had been scorched, but when he looked more closely, he realized that the ground was moving, _writhing_. The entire earth, as far as the eye could see, was covered in black stitches. The overall effect made it look like a nest of worms. The only clean spot was the base of the waterfall.

"You always take us to the nicest places," Hidan commented wryly.

Even Kakuzu wouldn't deny that this place was a dump. He looked back to the sanctuary they'd just abandoned, but on the outside it was quite different. The entire mountain was a sickly green color, like mold and tarnished metal. The waterfall looked pristine, but the rest of it reminded him of a trash heap. The most beautiful place he'd ever been was disgusting on the outside.

"What do we do now?" Kakuzu felt disoriented by this revelation, like his entire existence had been twisted inside out.

"Let's go." Hidan took a step away from the base of the waterfall. The black stitches squirmed under his foot, but he didn't let them trip him.

Kakuzu was more hesitant to make that first step. The sight of the black, writhing mass made him nauseous now, even though his stitches had never bothered him in life. Hidan was already ten paces ahead of him, though, and if he didn't move, he'd be left behind. He wondered for a moment whether he should just spend eternity in the gold room. In the back of his mind, though, he knew that he could never truly be at peace there anymore, not now that he knew about this place's ghastly exterior.

Kakuzu took a step and, to his surprise, the stitches recoiled from his feet. As he walked, the stitches retreated further. The ground was brown and almost barren around his feet, except for a few tiny sprouting shoots of green that had somehow survived.

Hidan observed this as well. "Great. You can walk _ahead_ of me from now on."

Kakuzu wondered if the stitches would come back after his feet had passed, but when he reached Hidan, he turned back to look, and there was a clear path, only a couple of feet wide, where the soil was now exposed to the sun above.

It would take a hundred lifetimes to clear the land that Kakuzu could see, but he didn't have anything else to do now. With Hidan only a step behind him, he headed off into this new world.

Behind his feet, the earth bloomed.

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As always, I love all feedback, even if it's just to let me know that someone's reading. Next Chapter: Deidara...


	4. Deidara Dreams

Disclaimer, etc.: See Chapter One.

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Akatsuki Dreams  
by Kantayra

Chapter Four – Deidara Dreams

The world exploded into a million tiny fragments: spontaneous, breathtaking, and achingly beautiful…

And then Deidara could feel the wind on his face, the sun on his back, and the ground rushing by. He opened his eyes to see fields and trees passing by far below him. He wasn't sure where he was or how he had gotten here, but it didn't matter because he was flying. Nothing else seemed important.

This was different from how he was used to flying, though – better. He looked to the left, following the line of his shoulder until it turned to white clay, spreading out into a broad wing. His right arm was a wing, too. In fact, now that he thought about it, his whole body felt different. That was good, though: too long in the same form was just boring.

He'd always known that some day he would become a work of art. It had just happened in more ways than one.

"I always knew that some day you'd blow yourself up in the most pointless way imaginable," a bland voice eerily echoed Deidara's thoughts.

"Well, I only told you a thousand times, yeah, Master Sasori?" Deidara looked up and to the right, where the voice had come from.

Sasori flew along beside him, the metal blades in his shoulders fanned out like skeletal wings. He shouldn't have been able to fly like that, but then Deidara was supposed to be dead, so little things like that didn't bother him.

"There was always the vain hope that you'd see sanity some day," Sasori retorted snidely.

"You made yourself art," Deidara countered, gesturing to Sasori's metal wings. The movement in his own wing caused Deidara to do a quick barrel roll that was terrifying and exhilarating. "Don't blame me for doing the same."

Sasori fixed Deidara with his typical bored expression, but Deidara had always been able to sense the frustration bubbling up beneath Sasori's calm demeanor. Deidara had forgotten how much fun this was, just to tease Sasori and not worry about where they were heading. It seemed to him like it had been a long time since he'd done this, but he couldn't quite remember why. Details from the past were fading now, things he had once known becoming nothing and leaving only _himself_ and his art.

"I think you made a great bang, Deidara-senpai," a third voice chimed in.

Deidara looked down and to his left to see Tobi gliding over the tops of the clouds, splitting the white wisps into swirls of condensation. Apparently, he could walk on air in this place.

"I don't see why you had to bring _him_ along," Sasori complained.

Tobi made a taunting gesture in Sasori's direction and then swooped down to take out a puffy cirrostratus.

"He's my partner," Deidara answered automatically. "I have to watch over him."

"_I'm_ your partner," Sasori retorted.

"And you have to watch over me," Deidara agreed.

"You don't even know what that means."

Now that Deidara thought about it, it was sort of a contradiction. Deidara's partnership with Sasori and his partnership with Tobi didn't really fit together. Somehow, though, Deidara knew that they _could_ fit, like two halves of a shattered mirror, if he just moved the pieces right.

He shrugged, and the movement in his wings caused him to make a quick, breathtaking swoop. He dove right through a cloud and watched it scatter in his wake. A little laugh escaped his throat because this, too, was art. Tobi's enthusiasm was catching.

The two of them darted through the clouds for some time like that, Deidara twirling through the air on his new wings and Tobi gliding on the cloud tops like his feet were light as feathers. It was freedom the way Deidara had always imagined it, and it was only when he turned to tell Sasori of his delight that he realized that they'd left Sasori far behind.

"We don't need him, Deidara-senpai," came Tobi's smiling voice. "This is fun!"

Deidara half-smiled in agreement on the latter point, but… "I do." Reluctantly, Deidara looped back around, flying ever higher until Sasori finally caught up with them once more.

"Brat," Sasori sighed, but his lips were curved into the slightest of smiles.

Deidara watched Tobi skip ahead of them. It occurred to him then that this was his fate: he'd always be between the two of them, half of one and half of the other. It was a comfortable place to be: never lonely and always changing.

"You're dead, you know."

"Of course, Master," Deidara smiled.

"Death is permanent. In your ultimate act to be fleeting, you've become the thing which you dreaded most."

"No," Deidara argued, "death is ever-changing. Just look!" Deidara saw the sun setting and the land retreating far beneath them and the clouds vanishing as Tobi split them one-by-one.

"It's all the same," Sasori retorted. "Eternal, unchanging, just this for all time."

Deidara didn't see that at all, but in one moment of perfect clarity, he realized that that was what Sasori had seen all along. "Our art has always been the same," he finally understood.

Sasori rolled his eyes. "You're just realizing that now?"

Deidara laughed, and he felt the wind on his wings and his face. The clay in his body was drying now, and the wind was blowing the dried silt away one grain at a time. Soon, he'd be gone. It was the most exciting thing he'd ever experienced.

"You aren't afraid at all?" Sasori asked skeptically.

"If there's nothing on the other side, then this will be the best moment of my life." Something felt warm and very safe inside Deidara at the thought.

"And if not?"

"Then my Master will be waiting for me, yeah?"

Sasori didn't answer, but there was a light in his eyes that told Deidara the truth just the same. Deidara's body continued to crumble, one form becoming another and, with a final laugh, he was in the beyond.

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Comments of any kind are always appreciated, and thanks so much to everyone who's commented so far! Next chapter will be Itachi...


	5. Itachi Dreams

Disclaimer, etc.: See Chapter One.

Author's Note: Thanks so much to everyone who's left feedback so far!

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Akatsuki Dreams  
by Kantayra

Chapter Five – Itachi Dreams

When Itachi opened his eyes, the whole world was blue. He blinked twice, slowly and deliberately, getting his eyes accustomed to this new world. For so long the blood-red of the Sharingan had tinged everything he saw, harsh and violent. In comparison, this world was soothing.

His eyes finally became used to the muted blues and browns and made out the outlines of trees and grass. He was in the middle of a pale blue forest, on a path. The light from above was more than enough to see by, but soft and muted like moonlight.

Itachi let out a deep sigh and headed down the path before him, because that seemed like the thing to do. The usual sounds of nature followed his movements: the wind in the leaves, the chirping of insects, and the song of birds. In so many ways it was like the world he'd just left behind, but…gentler.

In the back of his mind, Itachi knew that he had to be dying, and this all was a hallucination. He'd spent his entire life developing genjutsu, but he'd never let himself fall into an illusion like this before. It was quite beautiful, really – restful. If these were the last moments that Itachi's consciousness would experience, he couldn't have asked for anything better.

Itachi would never have said that he was suicidal, even though he'd planned out every intricate detail of his own death. However, now that it was all over, he could genuinely say that he was glad to be here and no longer of the mortal world. His footsteps started off completely silent, the stealth instinctive after a lifetime of training. Then, cautiously, he deliberately kicked one of the tiny pebbles on the path before him.

The pebble skittered across the path to finally land in the grass to Itachi's right. It made a normal little sound as it did so. Millions of people did the exact same thing every day of their lives and weren't even aware of it. Itachi hadn't made as much noise while walking for as long as he could remember. He liked it, though, he now realized. It was…liberating.

Itachi continued to walk in the pale blue light and reveled in the new feeling. Anything he did in this place didn't matter. All of his plans were at an end, and there was absolutely nothing he could do now to influence the real world. Even if he'd failed in every contingency he'd laid out, it was all over and done with. A part of him would have liked to find out whether he'd ultimately succeeded or failed, but it didn't seem that death held any great answers yet. Itachi was all right with that, though; he was very accustomed to not getting what he wanted by now.

He faced a moment where he could worry about all the loose ends he'd left behind him, all the trials and obligations. Itachi had always been eminently practical, however, and he let such thoughts go. This was the end; there was no point in dwelling.

As he came to this conclusion, he reached a small clearing. The sound of laughter was in the air, and Itachi saw, on the far side of the clearing, a park where children were playing. He realized that he should have detected the sounds of their voices from miles away, tasted their chakra on the backs of his teeth. It didn't particularly bother him that he hadn't, though. He felt entirely neutral about the topic, as if he'd been released from all his ninja training and he just was…

Well, he didn't quite know what he was without the conspiracies and mind games that had dictated every moment of his life from the day he was born. He supposed he was just Itachi now, but he couldn't even begin to guess what that meant.

He wasn't alone, though. The sound of sharp scraping sounded to his right, and he turned to see Kisame, in the same shades of blue as the rest of this world, slowly and methodically polishing his sword with a leather cloth. Samehada was stuck deep into the earth so much so that, if Itachi looked at it just the right way, the sword almost looked like a tree trunk.

Kisame didn't say a word as Itachi approached, remaining absorbed in his task. That suited Itachi just fine because he didn't have anything in particular to say. He'd always liked that about Kisame. His partner knew how to respect Itachi's need for calm and quiet and didn't fill every moment with idle chatter.

Itachi sat down against a tree trunk a few feet from Kisame and let his head fall back against the bark. The blue light felt soothing on his skin, like a cool summer breeze. Contentment seeped into Itachi's pores, and he realized that he could stay like this forever.

Across the clearing, the laughter of the children bubbled ever louder, and Itachi thought he spotted a familiar, unruly head of black hair in the middle of the game. He wondered if, in a place like this, all the childhoods that had been ripped away by the harsh reality of life could play out the way they should have in an ideal world. It was a fanciful notion, but Itachi found that he liked it. It meant that, in the end, cruelty was irrelevant.

Itachi let the sounds wash over him: the children playing and Kisame rigorously polishing. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so relaxed. He thought that maybe he never had been. Maybe his endless duties had begun so early that he'd never been able to experience this moment until death. Itachi could feel his responsibility fall away from him now, and for the first time he just _was_.

Slowly and deliberately, Itachi shut his eyes, letting the sounds of those around him wash over him and consume him.

Eyes finally closed forever, a smile curved across his lips.

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And there we have Itachi. As a starving author, I live off of reviews. :P

Also, as a couple of people have cleverly noted, I'm now all caught up to canon in terms to who has died. I still plan to write chapters for Kisame, Zetsu, Konan, Pain, and Madara, but I don't know which chapter should go immediately next. (Any guesses? Personally, I fear for Kisame or maybe Konan at the moment.) I briefly toyed with the idea of writing chapters before the actual deaths. In the long run, however, I think that will result in weaker chapters, so I've decided to wait. I'll see you all again when Kishimoto decides it's time for another beloved villain to die...


	6. Pain Dreams

Akatsuki Dreams  
by Kantayra

Chapter Six – Pain Dreams

Nagato awoke to the embodiment of his life.

His useless body hung limp, trapped in its cage. A thousand points of agony stung his limbs. Once, he'd tried to fight against the sensations, to push them back. He'd learned to embrace them long ago, however, and now they almost didn't register. The sharp spikes were the background noise to his existence now, and he was only ever aware of them at that moment right when he was awakening.

To his right stood Yahiko, cold and dead and lifeless as ever, waiting for Nagato to breathe false life into him once again. To his left stood Konan, with head bowed, eyes closed, looking almost as lifeless as Yahiko while she awaited Nagato's next move.

Dimly, Nagato remembered that he was dead, that all this agony should have ended, and that he had no more orders to give. This world didn't seem to agree with him, though.

Instead, he reached for his chakra, forced it through the metal piercings that permeated his body, and willed Yahiko to move. Nothing happened. Nagato frowned, tried again, and then realized that something _was_ different. In this world, Yahiko lacked the corresponding piercings that Nagato had given him. This Yahiko was entirely lifeless, lost to him.

Nagato turned his attention to Konan instead. She still hadn't looked up, as if she had yet to notice he was awake. The Konan Nagato had known had always been much sharper to react. He opened his mouth to speak but, to his horror, no sound emerged. He tried again, but it felt as though something were pushing the sound back, trapping it inside his body.

Panic slithered through him as he realized that this observation worked on multiple levels. If he couldn't reach out to Yahiko and Konan, he _was_ trapped, inside this useless, frail shell, with no means of interacting with anything ever again. A part of him wanted to scream at the thought, but he held it back. Even in death, Yahiko and Konan needed him. He had stayed strong for them impossibly long, even though in reality he was so weak.

At that moment, however, his fears were assuaged. Konan blinked, as if life had suddenly been breathed into her body, and looked up to stare right at him. Eerily, Yahiko did the exact same thing. It was as though, no matter what had happened in the real world, in this world they were the same kind of being. Maybe they always had been.

Konan and Yahiko met each other's gazes in a moment of solidarity that Nagato didn't quite understand. Then, as one, they approached him.

Nagato tried to ask them what was happening, but his voice was still trapped in his throat. As he watched, though, Yahiko brushed his fingers affectionately down Nagato's shoulder. Nagato was surprised to realize that he couldn't feel the gentle touch at all, anymore, through the spikes sunk into his skin. It had been so long since he'd wanted to feel anything else that he didn't even know when he'd lost the ability.

A hint of that old spitfire cockiness entered Yahiko's eyes as his fingers circled the first piercing he encountered, and he grinned right before he _yanked_. Nagato braced himself, and there was…

Nothing.

He glanced down, puzzled that he felt no sensation in response to having the metal ripped ruthlessly from his body. Yahiko's grin just grew wider, and he grabbed the next piercing.

At Nagato's left shoulder, Konan had closed in as well. Her fingers soothed over skin that couldn't appreciate the touch, before she gently pulled the first metal spike free, as well.

Nagato watched them work: Konan on one side, gentle and careful; Yahiko on the other, wild and reckless. They were efficient in their task, and Nagato watched as his arms, then his chest, were slowly freed from the metal implants. Neither of them said a word to him, but every so often one or the other would look into his eyes, as if checking for something.

Nagato's realization came slowly, as they ripped him to shreds. It had been subconscious for so long now that he didn't realize it at first, but the more they worked, the more startling it became, until suddenly it burst into his conscious thoughts once more:

The agony Nagato had embraced for so long was fading. Each spike pulled from his flesh was like a sharp breath of relief, blessed cool replacing the fire he had been forced to endure for so long.

Konan's eyes met his, and a wicked little smirk quirked her lips, like she'd known something he didn't all along.

Nagato reached out instinctively in response and, before he could even think about what he was doing, his arm stretched out to cover Konan's hand, where she was removing the metal from his thigh. Nagato blinked in disbelief at where his limb had moved under its own power for the first time in decades.

Konan winked, and Yahiko laughed, and Nagato felt the strange urge to laugh, too. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd laughed.

The last of the metal was pulled from his feet, and he half fell, half stumbled forward in response. Konan and Yahiko caught him, trembling, between them. The prison he'd rested in for too long crumbled to dust behind him.

For several moments, he could actually _feel_. Yahiko and Konan were warm and strong, and Nagato couldn't remember why he'd ever thought things would be any different. For a moment, he wished that this feeling would never end.

"Don't be fooled," Konan told him.

"This, too, is a prison," Yahiko agreed.

Nagato watched and saw that it was true. Just as the metal had been pulled from his flesh, so now the flesh was being pulled from his mind. Soon feeling and body would be gone as well, and the only thing left would be…

"Freedom," he finally croaked out to Konan and Yahiko's knowing smiles.

* * *

Four left to go. Any bets on who will be next? (And, wow, I sure was wrong about this one.)


End file.
